Why is that a story?

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The question of what makes something newsworthy has always been one of the most fascinating questions in journalism.

The internet is full of academic research pointing to the five elements that define newsworthiness. Or the seven elements. Or sometimes ten.

To qualify as news, a story has to have prominence, timeliness, oddity, consequence, human interest, conflict. The list goes on, and no one can really agree on how all these factors come together to determine whether a story makes it into a news bulletin or not.

When it comes to the ABC, there has always been a healthy public debate about our news judgement. Do we properly cover the stories that really matter? Are we biased? Are we ‘dumbing down’ or are we too dull and worthy? Do we cover trendy social issues at the expense of more down-to- earth hip pocket stories?

Well, in a shock move, we decided to try and find out. On the basis that facts are usually a better basis for discussion than perception and wild speculation, we took some time to review a small selection of our news coverage and compare it with other news organisations.

The conclusions are wide-ranging and fascinating, but the first thing to stress is that it is a small selection. A few news bulletins, in just three cities, on just a couple of platforms over several days. Compared with our vast news and current affairs output around the country, it is tiny indeed, and we will be doing more of these reviews in the future to look at our news coverage in other cities and on other platforms.

But keeping that in mind, there are still some interesting results from the 1500 stories examined in the current review.

In our nightly TV news, we do more Federal Politics and more reporting on policy than the commercial news, while the commercials do more crime and more stories that can only be classified as ‘general interest’ – colourful and sometimes sensational, but not always tied to a significant or important issue.

On radio it is a similar story, with an added focus on international news on the ABC. Commercial radio bulletins, in contrast, seem to be much more parochial.

None of that should be particularly surprising, and the ABC’s focus on important issues of substance is not something we would ever want to change. As the national broadcaster with a strong focus on public interest journalism, we will always focus on the stories that people need to know about, rather than the trivial or the sensational.

But when you dig more deeply into many of the examples, there are also questions for us to ponder. One is whether we can make our coverage of important policies and issues more relevant by speaking to everyday Australians more, and politicians or ‘stakeholders’ less. Another issue is whether we can do more to include coverage from regional and rural areas. We produce lots of excellent stories from regional Australia, but they don’t seem to pop up in our key bulletins as much as you might expect.

It’s all part of the ongoing conversation about newsworthiness, ensuring that we continue to cover the stories that matter, but in ways that are as relevant as possible to the audience we serve.

Alan Sunderland

Editorial Director

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